The train is starting for Niagara, and I am in it, endeavouring to recal the impressions of 1826, which, being but very dim, my anticipations partake of the charm of novelty.  While in the middle of a seventh heaven of picturative fancy, the screeching of the break announces the journey’s end.  As I emerge from the motley group of fellow-passengers, a sound, as of very distant thunder heard through ears stuffed with cotton, is all that announces the neighbourhood of the giant cataract.  A fly is speedily obtained, and off I start for the hotel on the Canadian side.  Our drive took us along the eastern bank till we reached the suspension-bridge which spans the cliffs of the river.  Across this gossamer causeway, vehicles are required to walk, under a heavy penalty for any breach of this rule.  The vibration when walking is not very great; but, going at a quick pace, it would undoubtedly be considerable, and might eventually loosen those fastenings on which the aerial pathway depends.  Arrived at the other side, I was quite taken aback on being stopped by an official.  I found he was merely a pro forma custom-house officer.  Not having been schooled in the Old World, he showed none of the ferret, and in a few seconds I was again trotting southwards along the western bank to the Clifton House Hotel.  The dull work of life is done, the cab is paid, my room is engaged, and there I am, on the balcony, alone, with the roaring of the cataract in my ears and the mighty cataract itself before my eyes.

What were my first impressions?—­That is a difficult question.  Certainly, I did not share that feeling of disappointment which some people take pains to express.  Such people, if they had dreamt that an unknown friend had left them 100,000l., would feel disappointed if he awoke and found a legacy of 90,000l. lying on their table; or, perhaps, they give expression to their feelings, by way of inducing the public to suppose that their fertile imaginations conceived something far grander than this most glorious work of Nature.  If a man propose to go to Niagara for mere beauty, he had better stay at home and look at a lily through a microscope; if to hear a mighty noise, he had better go where the anchors are forged in Portsmouth dockyard; if to see a mighty struggle of waters, he had better take a cruise, on board a pilot-boat, in the Bay of Biscay, during an equinoctial gale; but, if he be content to see the most glorious cataract his Maker has placed upon our globe; if, in a stupendous work of Nature, he have a soul to recognise the Almighty Workman; and if, while gazing thereon, he can travel from Nature up to Nature’s God; then, let him go to Niagara, in full assurance of enjoying one of the grandest and most solemnizing scenes that this earth affords.  It wants but one qualification to be perfect and complete; that, it had originally when fresh from the hands of its Divine Maker; and of that man has rifled it—­I mean solitude.—­Palace